Filed under: Your Home
One writer learns to accept that clutter in her home is evidence of a life well lived.I love flipping through the pages of design magazines and imagining life in a space so perfect. Gleaming granite countertops accented with a bowl of lemons and limes, sofas with pillows placed just right and coffee tables perfectly stacked with magazines, topped with a single paperweight.
Jodi Helmer
I tried to make my home look that way, too. I fluffed the throw pillows and arranged them with care. I dusted the coffee table and stacked the magazines. I didn't have lemons or limes to fill a glass bowl (come to think of it, I don't own a glass bowl), but I cleared the dish rack, stack of mail, dog treats and water bottles from the kitchen counter. The house looked good. With a fresh coat of paint, a few pieces of designer furniture and a bunch of fresh flowers, it might have made a decent shot for a magazine.
The perfection lasted for five minutes.
The mail was delivered, and I dropped it on the kitchen counter. I sat on the sofa, messing up the pillows. I picked up magazines and tossed them back in a haphazard pile. I made dinner and left the dishes in the sink.
I tried using wicker baskets to contain the detritus. I cut back on magazine subscriptions. I bought books on organization and clutter-free living. Nothing worked.
Life happened, and with it came clutter. Or so it seemed.
I needed a break from the battle. While the magazines and mail multiplied like dust bunnies, I went on vacation.
One afternoon, while I was sitting on the deck of my childhood home with my parents, I offered to show them some photos of the grand-dogs, a recent vacation and the new home they have not yet visited. After looking at a few photos, my mom exclaimed, "It's cute and bright...but it's so bare!"
The grand-dog, at play. Photo: Jodi Helmer
I looked at the picture and saw the stack of mail tucked between the trio of flowerpots on the kitchen island and the dog toys strewn across the living room floor. It didn't look bare to me.
But my mom didn't see the clutter. She noticed that there were no photos on the fireplace mantle. She thought the kitchen countertops were too bare and it bothered her that the gorgeous hand-carved bowl on the dining room table had nothing in it. To my mom, it looked like a house in a magazine, not the place where her daughter lived. She looked at the rooms but didn't see traces of me in them.
And then I showed her photos of my office.
"This room looks like it belongs in your house," she said.
I took a long look at the photo. There were notebooks and papers stacked on the desk, snapshots and cards were tacked all over the corkboard, books were piled in haphazard stacks that threatened to spill out of the bookcase and each wall was covered in art. The room was full.
I asked my mom why she thought the most cluttered room in the house looked the most like me.
"It's colorful. I see all of the things you love in there -- pictures of family and friends, art you've collected on your travels, stacks of books, toys that belong to the dogs...It's the one room that looks lived in."
She had a point: The room wasn't just full, it was also the place where I felt most fulfilled.
Then it struck me: There is a reason that I do my best work in that space. What I consider clutter isn't clutter at all -- it's a collection of pieces that tell my stories and reveal what is most important to me. The rest of the house could belong to anyone but there was no question that the office was mine.
It was then that I understood that the things I'd seen as clutter in my childhood home -- the worn cigar box that belonged to my grandfather, a collection of stuffed animals my sister and I loved as kids, ceramic plates and a plastic coin bank -- were the things my mom saved because they told our family stories. As much as I hated to admit it, my mom was right: There is nothing special about a picture perfect room; it's the things we put in those rooms -- the photos, souvenirs and books -- that make a house a home.
When I returned home later that week, I decided to embrace the clutter. The stuffed squeakers and tennis balls on the living room floor are a reminder to take a break for a game of fetch with the dogs. The cards and invitations that pile up on the kitchen counter are evidence of good times with good friends. And the books and magazines are part occupational hazard and part passion for an afternoon spent reading.
If the evidence of a life well-lived is in the clutter, I can learn to love it. Thanks, mom.
Jodi Helmer is the author of The Green Year: 365 Small Things You Can Do to Make a Big Difference.
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